Hey, everyone and welcome back to Hero Chat, SuperHeroHype’s semi-regular superhero movie and comic book podcast for people who know how to read. We have our first very special guest this week, but before we get to that, here’s my co-host, Mr. Spencer Perry! (applause)

Welcome back everyone! A lot of people want to know why we went for the show like this and not a straight podcast to which I must say, be patient, baby steps. Hero Chat the podcast may exist one day but for now it’ll remain like this. Anyway, if you really dig what we’re doing here, tell your friends! We have a lot of fun with this and hope you guys will stick with us. Back to you Ed!

Our first special guest for Hero Chat is Mr. Rick Marshall, who some may remember for his excellent work establishing MTV’s Splash Page, but these days, he’s a freelance writer for IFC, Movies.com, Fandango, Digital Trends and Spike TV and he can be found on Twitter as @RickMarshall. He’s also one of my favorite people to talk comics with, so everyone give Rick a hand! We’re also once again joined by ComingSoon.net’s Los Angeles-based conspiracy theorist, Mr. Silas Lesnick!

(And remember that sometime in the near future, we’re going to go out to our readers to join us for our chats, and we’ll probably start with those who post nice things about Hero Chat in the comments!)

So you can keep track of who is speaking:

Edward Douglas

Spencer Perry

Silas Lesnick

Rick Marshall

TOPIC #1 – X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

There was a big announcement last week that 20th Century Fox were going with “X-Men: Days of Future Past” for the First Class sequel which got a lot of people really excited but also created a lot of interesting questions, the first one being “How on earth are they going to do this?!?!” Personally I think too many people are expecting a straight adaptation and that is not going to happen. What do you guys think? Yeah, I think this is one of those cases when they use the tagline, but the film actually has little (if anything) to do with the story arc.

Well we’ve never seen a comic book movie that is a straight adaptation of any storyline. It won’t start with this.

True, even the Death of Phoenix in “The Last Stand” (which came from a plot by Vaughn) barely used any actual elements from the comics.

It also lets them potentially end with a rebooted universe a la Abram’s Trek.

I think that the closest we’ll get with this film is that it might involve some mutants, they might be called X-Men, and there might be some looking forward and backward in time…

Rick, that’s kinda cynical! Were you not a First Class fan?

I was not. It was one of my least favorite of the X-Men movies, actually. First Class didn’t do much for me at all. I would’ve loved to see a movie about Charles Xavier McAvoy and Michael Fassbender Magneto chasing Nazi Kevin Bacon, but sadly that was only the first 1/3 of the film or so… Most of the stuff involving the students and pretty much the entire finale all seemed rushed and kind of messy to me.

It’s interesting to me cause when I spoke to Simon Kinberg at Comic-Con, I learned three things… 1.) The sequel would focus on the four main characters and their relationships 2.) They were going to keep what worked, which included the period aspect of it 3.) That they’re trying to keep it somewhat tied in with the other three movies but only loosely. What makes this interesting is that Days of Future Past is about someone coming from the X-Men’s future to tell them about the world gone bad after the murder of Senator Kelly. The future of the First Class characters is the original three movies.

Unless like Silas said it’s an Abrams’ Star Trek style movie.

Well, it doesn’t have to be assuming time is changed at the end.

So it does open them up to create more ties between them, while also retrofitting some stuff to work with First Class. They’d change time so that it would make more sense for First Class, and create an alternate timeline from Bryan Singer’s films so they can introduce Wolverine in a third movie. Or whatever they want.

So which 4 characters are considered the main characters? Xavier, Magneto, and… I never got that there were any other “main” characters.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just the basics. Jackman, Stewart and McKellen and the First Class cast.

Xavier, Magneto, Mystique and Beast… those four are definite. The problem is that Days of Future Past involves Wolverine and Kitty Pryde from the future and I don’t expect to see either one heavily involved in this movie.

Yeah, how they work around Wolverine is going to be interesting.

Do you think they’d have Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen show up in this movie? That would blow many minds.

Exactly why they should.

Well, they had him in Wolverine… sort of.

The other option is to use this to introduce characters like Bishop and Cable to the X-Men movie universe.

The same way Wolverine in “First Class” blew minds. I think fans would be angry and happy about that. There’s no way they can use those two characters without fanboys getting bent out of shape about changes.

I can’t imagine Cable working since Scott and Jean aren’t really first class characters.

Silas, yeah, that’s a problem… so Bishop? Or Rachel? What if Professor X from the future shows up to tell them that some government guy against mutants will be murdered?

And then James McAvoy is like, why am I bald?

Yeah, they’ve also positioned so many of the characters from the first film in weird roles… like Havoc.

With his energy hoolahoops.

And his ambiguous relationship to Scott Summers…

That’s part of the problem with doing Days of Future Past at this point… but we know there will have to be elements of it. Someone from the future, an alternate timeline, etc.

Right. Which is why I think it’s going to be that story arc in name only, for the most part.

So the question is this… will there be anyway fans can be happy with this sequel?

Sure. Fans seemed happy with First Class, which took tremendous liberties with the actual “first class” of X-Men.

I definitely had problems with First Class, but I liked it enough despite the continuity issues.

You just need as much of the future as the original Terminator has, really.

Don’t make it the Termiantor Salvation of X-Men movies.

Maybe that’ll be the throwaway Sentinels scene like they had in Last Stand

Honestly, I think they should take the new franchise and run with it w/out heed to the previous franchise.

Maybe although they still have Hugh Jackman around as Wolverine and fans seemed to like the teases/cameos in First Class.

Agreed. It has a lot of potential where it doesn’t need help from uber-popular storylines.

You can also set up the future universe and spin that off into its own thing later.

That’s true, which is why calling it “Days of Future Past” may just be a bigger headache for them. Like making a movie called “Total Recall” without Mars.

Exactly. It did well enough on its own w/ a conspicuously non-adherent story. Just go with it… Embrace that. In the words of Professor X, “take off your shoes and let the beast loose!”

I’m glad he said “shoes.” Anything further to add on this or do we have to wait until other characters/cast is announced?

Longshot, people. Bring in Longshot.

Oh, God… that would be a bad idea. Unless they get Danny DeVito to play Mojo.

I’m into that.

If we don’t get a blonde, mullet-sporting mutant with a lucky streak, the franchise has failed.

I’m still going with the Patrick Stewart shows up to let James McAvoy know how horrible things will be. It would be like an end of the first Back to the Future scenario.

That scene could be cool.

The good thing is that they have a lot of material they could mine for future movies. Longshot and (Disco) Dazzler may have to wait. Actually, if they move ahead to the late ’70s/early ’80s, Dazzler would fit in!

And if Guardians of the Galaxy is hit they can do Starjammers!

Yeah, they haven’t even touched upon the Shiar and Starjammers.

I still say that whoever has the rights needs to reboot Blade in the 70’s.

Absolutely. I’d love to see the Death of Phoenix done right, too. That story rocked my world when it was first published, and actually holds up really well, imho. Just reset time and give it a do-over.

Too true… and it’s shocking that they’re all over 30 years old.

It’s going to take a lot to get any comic book movie to adhere to a certain story, especially X-Men I think.

Oh, absolutely, but we’ve had some good ones that keep the tone and general themes alive, even with tweaks to the story details.

Very true.

Sin City and 300 are the closest we’ll ever get.

That’s true, how did I forget about those.

Go to the next page for our chat on the planned Marvel Universe television show (which was done before it was announced that Joss Whedon would be in charge of it)